Aiyun Huang: Wired Percussion

As part of UC Irvine's Gassmann Electronic series, internationally-acclaimed musician and percussionist Aiyun Huang teams up with music scholars Sean Griffin, Michael Dessen, and Christopher Dobrien for a mesmerizing, genre-defying performance of multimedia and instrumentals in a unique and captivating storytelling experience. Archived footage projected on a screen behind the performers serve as a visual and historical backdrop to illustrate the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse of 1940, but the musicians integrate themselves into the story as fictional characters with musical interludes, with Huang playing her “sculptural soundbox” as a moon goddess overseeing the event (she even appears in eight different outfits for the narrative). The work, entitled, “Tacoma Narrows Monochord,” thus combines the surreal with the factual to depict this forgotten chapter of American history.

Fri., Jan. 30, 8 p.m., 2015

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